Cash Burn (26 page)

The darkness outside had turned his office window into a mirror. He meant to see if guilt revealed itself in his eyes. But he turned away from his image too fast to see anything but the face he used to trust.

The whir of the air-conditioner cut off. At eight o’clock every night, the building’s system shut down. The silence took on an even greater depth.

He grabbed his jacket and made for the elevator. At the push of the button, the engine that drove the car surged somewhere below, behind the closed panels he faced, and he had to resist the urge to look over his shoulder to see if the whole place was sliding toward him in an avalanche.

The doors opened. He stepped inside and pushed the button to take him down to the garage.

Wherever Serena was, that was where he belonged. The pastor was right. He should go to her, try to get past this suspicion. But how could she claim someone had forged that letter? It was absurd.

And Brenda drew him as well. With her eyes, with her skin, her hair, her electric touch. Want clawed at him in his deepest places, want for her and want for something only she could give him. No one else—not Serena and not anyone since he was a very young man—could make him feel this way.

She reminded him of Danah, he realized. It must be the reason he’d been so fascinated by her the instant she’d stepped into his office. Thinking of it made the want inside him grow into something so primal he couldn’t imagine having the strength to resist.

The elevator doors opened, and his cell phone chirped. The readout said
Brenda Tierney
.

He stepped into the garage and clicked on the phone icon to make the connection.

“I’m on my way.”

41

At Diane’s apartment building, Flip pressed a handful of buttons on the intercom and waited for a voice. His response, “It’s me,” eventually worked for somebody, and the latch smacked to unlock the front door. He moved into the lobby.

His hands returned to his jacket pockets. The box containing the gift was a rectangle the size of an ammunition clip. His fingers held it in place. After hours of enduring the suspicious stares of jewelry-store clerks at stores all over the west side, he had settled on this bracelet. The girl who sold it to him said the lucky lady would love him for it. Five carats of diamonds stretched out across platinum into what the girl called a tennis bracelet. He’d thought of asking her why they called it that but had kept his mouth shut. He’d wanted it over with. When she took it to the back of the store to wrap the box in foil gift paper and tie a ribbon around it, he half suspected she was switching it for a cheaper piece.

He set out up the stairs to the third floor and brought his hand away from the box to the railing. The sweat on his palm slicked the metal rail. Diane would like the bracelet. The girl at the store had said Diane would love him for it, and that girl should know. She’d better know.

The door at the top of the stairs took effort to move. He shoved it hard enough to make it bounce against the stop, and he was in the hallway. All these doors, duplicates of one another, grouped in pairs. Diane’s was the fifth one down on the right. He moved toward it, his feet heavy.

She would like it. She had to like it. Eight thousand dollars it had cost him, and the girl in the store had called Diane a lucky lady. And when Di asked how he’d gotten it, he would tell her he had a little job of his own going on the side. He’d tell her about Mr. B and the papers. He’d bring her into it so they could go over it together. She would like that too, and she would have some ideas how to make it even more worthwhile. He passed his hand over his hip pocket to make sure the papers were still there.

Flip reached her apartment door. He removed the box from his jacket pocket, tried to fluff the ribbon back into the curly mass the salesgirl had made. It had gotten pressed in his pocket, and he couldn’t get it to resume the right shape. He told himself it didn’t matter and twisted his neck to try to relax.

He knocked. From behind the door, he heard her voice call him inside. He would have to talk with her about screening her visitors better. If she’d seen some of the guys he’d seen, she wouldn’t let people in that easy. He ran his palm along his leg and reached for the doorknob. It turned, and he pushed the door open.

Candlelight flickered inside. Diane sat at the table, and the softness of the light cast a glow on her cheeks and nose, made the dimple in her right cheek a pinpoint of shadow. Two tall red candles stood in the center of the table. She’d set out plates for two, a bottle of wine, three steaming serving bowls and meat leafed out on a platter. The aroma of the food mixed with a fruity warmth that must have come from the candles posted on the coffee table and end tables.

How had she known he was coming? All the jitters he’d felt shifted into excitement. The fragrance, the care she’d taken with the table and candles, a woman’s vocals as soothing as a caress floating from the stereo speakers. He hadn’t talked to her for a week. He’d wanted to surprise her with the gift. How had she known?

But she rose from the table and her smile was gone. Something was wrong. He took a step into the room. The gift box was in both his hands. The settling of the expression on her face made him tighten his grip. He wanted to crush the box as she came around the table.

“Flip, darlin’ . . .”

Darkness settled in his eyes. The box went back into his jacket pocket.

She wore a long, silky robe the color of new pennies. The form of her body moved underneath the silk. Seeing it created a turmoil inside him that he clamped on so hard he thought he could feel his bones grinding.

She was before him, her hands on his arm. “It’s for the job, Flip.” Her voice was level. Her eyes were hemmed with black makeup. Her lips glistened in the candlelight. She wore heels, bringing the green of her eyes level with his. Through the fragrance of the food she’d prepared for another man, through the aroma from the candles, the scent of Diane came to him. So close.

Her fingers tightened on his arm. “You knew this would be part of it, Flip. You had to know.” Her eyes flicked past him, to the open doorway. “He’ll be here any second. You have to go.”

He tried to blink away the darkness. His eyelids were like sandpaper. He wanted to seize that pretty little neck in his fists. Or, no. He wanted to wait for the man coming, wanted his knuckles to feel that man’s face crushed beneath them.

She pushed him toward the door.

Before he could think, his arm flew up. It caught her hands and glanced against a shoulder. She stumbled backward.

He wanted to take it back, but it was too late. She went to the floor.

The robe slipped up as she fell, revealing her bare legs. By the time his eyes returned to her face, all the pretty had gone out of it, replaced with a fury that twisted her lips and brow, skin reddened.

“You have to go.” Her voice was cold as ice. She rolled onto her knees, and the robe cascaded to cover the bareness, pooling on the floor around her. “If he sees you, everything will be ruined.”

She was on her feet. The redness in her face remained, but she managed to put the pretty back into her expression, letting her forehead smooth and her lips turn into something like a smile.

Her intercom buzzed. She stepped toward it but stopped. She came to him. “That’s him. It’s for the job, darlin’. That’s all. When it’s over, we’ll be together.” Her breath was mints and steel, puffing on his cheek, the warmth of it transporting him to other times with her.

He turned to face her. Close enough to kiss. Close enough to bite. “Just tell me one thing.”

“Okay, darlin’. Then you have to go.” Her eyes the color of spring leaves flitted to the doorway and back to him.

“What’s the name you’re using? Just so I know which button to push downstairs?” He let her steer him to the door.

She leaned outside, looked up and down the hall, returned those green eyes to his. “Tierney. Brenda Tierney. Now go. Use the back stairs. I’ll call you later.”

42

Jason stood next to the intercom, waiting for Brenda’s voice to break the silence. She must not have heard his first ring, or maybe the system was broken. He reached toward the button again, but her voice came across to interrupt his movement. He spoke his name into the panel, and the door clicked open.

Serena’s face floated in his mind. She was a presence behind him. He stepped faster. He couldn’t bring himself to stop to call the elevator. As if he could outpace Serena’s presence, he bounded up the stairs two at a time. At the third floor, he shoved through and saw Diane’s door closed ahead. He had to get in there fast, or Serena would tear him away.

He didn’t bother knocking. The door was unlocked for him. He burst into the room. It was lit by candles. Their flames dimmed with the force of the air from the door. Brenda stood beside the table. Silk the color of peaches draped from her shoulders. She smiled, her hand slipping an inch toward him over the back of a chair.

Serena fled.

He slammed the door and crossed the room in three steps, and she was in his arms, pulling him to her, the softness and hardness of her flesh and bones formed to his. Her lips were sweet; her arms gripped his sides. Her hands moved over his back, and heat rose up within him threatening to explode.

She pulled away a quarter-inch, regaining her breath. “I made this dinner.” Her hands went to the sides of his head, and she pulled him to her. Another kiss. Urgent. “But all I want is you.”

* * *

Later, Brenda fed him cold meat from the platter that had been steaming when he arrived. She slipped pieces of beef between his lips, and the taste of her fingertips mingled with what she’d cooked for him.

“Don’t you want to sit at the table?” Jason’s back rested against the front of the sofa, his legs stretched out on the carpet.

“I’m fine here,” she said. She had her legs stretched out alongside his. The plate she’d made for him lay on his other side, and she had to reach across him and press against him to serve him.

She took up beet slices and held them to his mouth. A drop of bloody juice dripped from the beets onto his bare chest, a cool tap and trickle. She bent to it and licked it from his chest.

The vinegary tang of the beets washed through his mouth. He swallowed. She plucked another sliver of beef with her fingertips and brought it to his lips. Jawing it, he watched the movements of her shoulders and arms, her skin’s swell and stretch with her motions. She had a small mole on her right shoulder. He passed his finger over it—no imperfection in the smoothness of her skin.

He looked into her eyes over the slice of potato she held up to him. “That’s enough.”

She took the potato into her own mouth, swallowed, and brought her lips to his. Another kiss on his cheek, and she rested against him, fit her head into the hollow underneath his shoulder. His left arm surrounded her back.

Unease in his chest wrestled against the sensations of her skin against his. Serena had returned. A vision of her floated in his mind. Serena at the altar, veiled and facing him, expectant when he lifted the veil for their first kiss as husband and wife. He shook his head.

“What is it?” Brenda brought her face up to his. The candles were dying, the lights flickering to cast thousands of conflicted shadow lines from her eyelashes.

“Thinking about tomorrow.” A lie. In his mind swam the question of whether he’d told more lies in his life than truths. He spoke again so the question couldn’t surface. “I have to do some dirty work for Vince.”

A frown drew a black line up between her eyebrows. “I hate him.”

“He’s my favorite guy.”

“Sometimes I wish . . . Never mind.” She pushed her cheek into his shoulder. Stray blonde hairs tickled his chin.

“What? What do you wish?”

She lifted her face to his again; her eyes gleamed in the candlelight. “Sometimes I wish we could do something to get back at him. Get back at all of them. For the way they’re treating you. It’s so unfair.” In this light, her eyes were deep jade, tiny flashes from the candles glistening at the whites. Her eyelashes webbed crisscrossing shadows around them.

The banker in him said they shouldn’t talk about it. Some things were better unexplored, were too dangerous to let your mind carry fleeting fantasies into uttered words.

But she smiled and let her hand move over his chest, and the motion seemed to draw the fantasies out. “It’s silly; I know. But just for fun.” She brought her eyes back to his, the hand roving his skin. “You have so much authority, Jason. There’s got to be something you could do.”

“Just for fun.”

“We’re just talking. There’s nobody here but you and me.” She shifted against him, bringing her face even closer, the fragrance of the food they’d shared blending with the fruity scent of the candles flickering to their smoky deaths. “What if we just went down to the vault one day and cleared it out?”

He laughed. “Sure. Nobody would stop us from doing that.”

“Just tell them you have to check on a customer’s cash. They’d buy that, right?”

“Oh, that’s a great plan. I can see you’ve given this a lot of thought.” He smiled at her. “Anyway, if I really wanted to do something the vault’s not where I’d go. That’s not where the real money is.”

“What do you mean? I was down there once. There are stacks of it.”

“Hundreds of thousands. Maybe a few million on a big day. It’s not enough for the risk of doing something like that. You always have to balance out the risk-reward. One of the cardinal rules in business.”

“Well, where then?”

Jason swept his hand through the air. “In the ether. In the wires. Debits and credits. Settlements every night in the tens of millions. The hundreds of millions. Billions. Banks wiring money back and forth through the fed. Loan advances and paydowns. Companies getting bought and sold.”

Brenda’s lips were parted as she followed his words. He could still feel those lips on his, their tenderness and need, could still taste them.

He touched her chin. “It amazes me when people commit a federal crime for a few thousand dollars. Get the FBI after them, not just the local police. They’d be better off holding up a liquor store.”